And that is, indeed, exactly what Shoutcast is doing. However, Shoutcast isn't exactly reaching "immense" audiences yet. Most of these webcasters are still truly tiny: The top servers draw, at the most, around 100 simultaneous listeners, but the average server boasts merely a handful of lonely listeners. As Woodcock puts it, "At the moment it's very much enthusiast driven, and there are occasions when we find all we have lined up for a show are six 13-year-olds."

Much like public access television or pirate radio, these Shoutcast stations offer a fascinating glimpse into the minds of international youth. If allowed to produce a channel, what kinds of things do people send out over the Web-waves? There is, it turns out, a heavy emphasis on techno and trance, hip-hop and alternative rock, plus a dose of '80s and heavy metal for good measure. But niche music fans can also find servers that feature everything from Bartók to tango to "Red Neck Radio." There are servers broadcasting out of Turkey, the Netherlands, the U.K. and Germany. On some servers, you can even hear the DJ sending live shouts-out to his listeners and responding to fan e-mails.

Shoutcast, like the MP3 format in general, has proven popular with independent musicians -- such as 18-year-old Mitchell Shier, who broadcasts the freestyle hip-hop he creates with his friends in Canada in hopes of gaining support from other online hip-hop fans. Says Shier, "We don't feel that we have anything that's professional enough to be mainstream," but he's been excited to watch their server gain a small but devoted group of listeners.

And, interestingly, there are also a large number of servers that don't play music at all. Popular servers include the "All Adam Sandler All the Time" station, which broadcasts clips of Sandler comedy skits; a server that broadcasts audio tracks from "Star Wars" movies; and a server that streams a reading of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." There's even the occasional talk show.

Then there are servers like that of Tom Higgins, a 34-year-old systems analyst, who sends out digital versions of old science-fiction radio shows from the 1950s, clips of William Gibson readings and other bizarre aural arcana on a tiny station he's tagged WSMF. Explains Higgins, "My whole idea is spoken word -- the spoken word has an innate power that so much of the media we have today lacks. I'm trying to bring back stuff that has an oral nature that allows people to use their brain and fill in the gaps with their imagination."

Although Shoutcast has, not surprisingly, initially caught on with a primarily young, male, techie crowd, it is also starting to attract the notice of bigger companies. Last month, the Beastie Boys' record label launched its own Shoutcast server, called Grand Royal Radio, which plays continuous music from Grand Royal's artists all day long. And commercial online radio companies like Green Witch are also gradually making the switch.

As Ian Rogers, the webmaster for Grand Royal, explains, "Shoutcast is a technology that's closer to Grand Royal's market than some of the alternatives -- I'd rather see their music next to some all-dance hall reggae channel than CNBC. It makes more sense; it's where the people are. It definitely does have more indie cred -- it's what people really listen to. It's way more punk rock."

Shoutcast and Icecast fans list a number of reasons why the MP3 streaming software is an improvement over other webcasting solutions. No. 1 is the cost: A license to run Real software, the market leader in streaming audio, can cost thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars, while Shoutcast is totally free for noncommercial users, and a commercial license costs merely $300. Icecast, an open-source product, is totally free.

"Real Audio was adequate but we weren't happy with it," explains Brian Zisk, broadcaster of Green Witch, who has moved one of his six online radio stations to Icecast. "Real puts ads in the left side of the page and there's nothing we can do about it. The sound quality was lousy, they weren't responsive, and we couldn't have the source code to make changes."

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